R v Hickey
[2020] VCC 278
•13 March 2020
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA AT MELBOURNE CRIMINAL DIVISION | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publishing |
CR-19-01499
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS (CWTH) |
| v |
| BROCK HICKEY |
---
JUDGE: | HIS HONOUR JUDGE TINNEY | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 11 March 2020 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 13 March 2020 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R v Hickey | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2020] VCC 278 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
---
Catchwords: Import a marketable quantity of border-controlled drug. (between 325 and 421 grams pure cocaine), related summary offence: possess cartridge ammunition
---
APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Ms G James | Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Mr L Barker | Valos Black & Associates |
HIS HONOUR:
1Brock Steven Hickey, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of importing a marketable quantity of a border-controlled drug, contrary to s.307.2(1) of the Criminal Code (Cwth). The drug involved was cocaine. You have also pleaded guilty to the related summary offence of possessing cartridge ammunition.
2You are 37 years of age and you have admitted a criminal history of some length.
3Under the Criminal Code, a marketable quantity of cocaine is specified as being 2 grams or more, and below 2 kilograms. Two kilograms pure is therefore the threshold for the more serious offence of importing a commercial quantity. The pure weight of the cocaine imported by you was between 325 and 421 grams.
4The maximum penalty for the importation offence is, as you have heard, imprisonment for 25 years, or a very large fine, or both. The summary offence has provision only for a fine.
Facts
5The circumstances of your offending are set out in a relatively short summary dated 28 October 2019, which was read aloud by the prosecutor, Ms James. That summary was marked as Exhibit A on the plea. Mr Barker made it plain that this was an agreed summary. In those circumstances, I see no need to descend to the full details of the facts in these my reasons. I will not stray beyond the agreed summary.
6Stated very briefly, on 27 January 2019, you made two payments totalling $4940 to two people in Sao Paulo, Brazil by way of Western Union money transfer. You provided your name and phone number when making those transfers. A consignment was intercepted by the Australian Border Force on 10 February 2019. It contained two bags with one labelled as ‘Acai Powder’. It was addressed to your then residential address but for ‘Brandon Henly’. There were anomalies in the x-ray image and further examination took place. Presumptive testing detected the presence of cocaine and the Australian Federal Police were called in. Australia Post tracking records showed that an IP address registered to your partner at your home address had conducted a check of the status of the consignment on 28 February.
7On 9 April 2019 a search warrant was executed at your home address. Police seized your black Alcatel mobile phone. They located a backpack which had a note of a name similar to the name on the intercepted parcel. They also located an ammunition belt in your bedroom, which contained ten shot gun shells. You were not authorised to possess the ammunition. Hence the related summary matter which I will scarcely mention again in these reasons.
8You gave a no comment interview on 9 April 2019, as was your right.
9Your phone was examined by investigators and ‘WhatsApp’ messages dated between 8 February and 8 April disclosed relevant messaging between you and the overseas supplier. There were also messages between you and someone in Australia and that person was making enquires as to the exact arrival date of ‘our gifts from overseas’.
10The gross weight of the substance containing cocaine was 478.2 grams. As I said a short time ago it was between 325 to 421 grams pure cocaine.
11The pure quantity was therefore between 162 to 210 times the marketable quantity threshold, and between 16% and 21% of the commercial quantity threshold.
12You have been in custody since your arrest on 9 April 2019.
13You pleaded guilty at what I would have treated as the earliest stage, that is at the second committal mention on 31 July and you were committed to this Court for a plea listed on 28 November 2019. Unfortunately, things then ran off the rails on that plea date when you indicated through your then practitioner your intention to plead not guilty. No notice had been given to the Court or the prosecution of that development. I came onto the Bench to hear a plea. So, that represented the complete waste of one court day. I adjourned off the matter to a 12 December directions hearing date. On that date it was adjourned off to 24 January as your new solicitor was then not in funds. On 24 January you were arraigned before another Judge and pleaded guilty. The plea was conducted before me on Wednesday of this week. You have in this way taken the long road home but you have abandoned the mindset that led to that potential trial, presumably your previous instructions to Mr Yianoulatos of importing this cocaine purely for personal use. That is now altogether abandoned and if I may say so, sensibly so given the messages relied upon from your phone.
Matters raised in mitigation
14Your counsel, Mr Barker, conducted a brief plea on your behalf on Wednesday of this week. It was brief but it was backed up by very comprehensive written submissions that were marked as Exhibit 2. There was in truth really not that much that could be said on your behalf. He described your personal background and made submissions as to your excellent efforts in custody as well as your prospects of rehabilitation and the sentencing purposes coming into play in a case such as this. He sensibly abandoned a number of matters specifically raised in the earlier plea submissions authored by Mr Yianoulatos. He placed before me your instructions as to role. He raised a number of matters in mitigation. They included:
· Your early guilty plea;
· The presence of some contrition or remorse;
15Mr Barker conceded the seriousness of the offence and the inevitability of an immediate term of imprisonment with a sentence of a dimension requiring the fixing of a non-parole period here.
Prosecution submissions
16The prosecutor, Ms James also made some oral submissions. They were quite brief and that is because she had prepared a detailed written sentencing outline that was marked as part of Exhibit A. The written submissions reminded me of the provisions of s.16A(2) of the Crimes Act1914 (Cth), setting out as it does many of the matters that I must have regard to under the Federal sentencing regime. The submissions were uncontroversial and referred to various matters of pretty firmly established principle, such as for instance the relevance of the quantity of the drug, the significance of the awareness or knowledge of the type of the drug and the quantity, the role of an accused, the importance of general deterrence and the need for adequate punishment in this sort of case. The Crown did not accept your account as to being an underling. I say your account but of course there was no account from you other than your instructions to Mr Barker, instructions that veered sharply away from the instructions that must have been provided to your earlier legal team. I put Mr Barker on notice as to my reservations as to your account and my difficulty in accepting it on the state of the materials then placed before me. Mr Barker backed away from the use of the word ‘underling’ and conceded it did not sit easily with the text or messaging traffic that was relied upon in this case. Mr Barker chose not to call you to give evidence as to your precise role.
17The Crown argued that the tag or label employed to describe your role was not the critical thing. What was critical was an examination of what you had actually done. They said you had taken all these steps yourself. You knew the amount and the nature of the drug and had taken all these relevant steps yourself to import it albeit it in a setting where the text traffic showed that there was unmistakeably another interested party at this end.
18The prosecution argued that a sentence requiring the fixing of a non-parole period was really the only available disposition. As I have said, that was not in any way in dispute.
Background
19I turn now quite briefly to your personal family background. I am not going to set it all out here. It was only briefly placed before me and there is really nothing in your family background explaining this offending. You are 37 years old born 17 July 1982. Your father died when you were only 4 so it was not the best of starts in life and things deteriorated from there. There was then a level of dysfunction which I do take into account as far as I am able to. There was much friction with your stepfather in the blended family. There were many schools that you attended as paragraph 10 makes clear. Schooling was not a success at all. You left home aged 17. You always had a very close bond or relationship with your grandparents. They are both still living and you and they are concerned that they may not survive your sentence. They are in their 80’s. They are not in good health and the prospect of not seeing them again worries you, as it should. Your mother has also been very unwell in recent times, having survived a brain aneurism. She is recovering up in Queensland.
20
You have one child from a past relationship who you do not see at all and that worries you. She is 5 years of age. You were in a relationship at the time of this crime. Your partner still supports you and was present the other day in the course of the plea. In fact, you had only relatively recently been released from prison onto an intensive CCO with monitoring and supervision at the time of this offending. There is even a mention of that community corrections order in the messages to the supplier. That combination order was imposed on
3 December 2018 with a 6 month term of imprisonment leading into a community corrections order, with 142 days of pre-sentence dentention declared. It follows then that you must have been released sometime in January and by later in that very same month you were engaged in this importation. So, serious criminal conduct in that context but that is what you chose to do. You have what is described by your counsel as a significant enough or unenviable criminal record. That is true enough I suppose but this is the most serious matter that you have been charged with by a country mile and the record is nowhere near as long as some that we see. I am not going to waste your time or mine trawling my way through it. You have though been given chances by Courts and you have not taken them all. You received 240 days prison in March 2017 as well as the 6 months and the community corrections order I described a moment ago. You have also in the past received a partially suspended prison term back I think in 2008.
21
The record also discloses your past use of drugs. I am told you have been a user of drugs and alcohol from a very early age. I refer to paragraph 14 of the supplementary defence plea submissions. These are the submissions of Mr Barker that were marked as Exhibit 2. Exhibit 1 were the defence plea submissions from
Mr Yianoulatos. There have been many drugs that you have used, most of them really, but the most problematic has been ice. Your drug use is not being relied upon as being mitigatory here. You do though have perhaps a growing sense of how they have so damaged your own life.
22On the employment front, you found your way into roof tiling and it was a pretty decent employment record until about 2015. There were struggles to maintain employment owing to your increasing drug use. You have worked in custody and you have done a number of courses and remained drug free as Exhibit 3 filed on the plea makes plain. These are all positives of course. You have demonstrated over the years that you are capable of hard work.
23You had instructed your legal team, headed up by Mr Yianoulatos that this importation was a once off event exclusively for your personal use of that which was being imported. That you were therefore the sole importer and principal with a heavy addiction to cocaine and hence, from those matters, that you had a complete defence and wished to run a trial. That has totally changed with Mr Barker providing to the court your current instructions of meeting a prisoner and being offered some ice and $3,000 to involve yourself in the importation. Then being provided that money by that person and being subjected to later threats when the importation came unstuck. So, the theme really was of your being a paid underling. There is no evidence of any of this at all from you. You made a no comment interview as was your right and your counsel chose not to call you. This in the setting of someone who has presumably given completely different instructions not three months ago and in the setting of some of the WhatsApp messages which display a real level of autonomy with you raising with the overseas supplier the issue of a kilogram amount. There were some texts which clearly spell out that there is another interested party at this end and likely someone who lent you the money. That person was sending you some pretty menacing texts which you forwarded on to the overseas supplier to plead your own case. But what really was the arrangement between you and that other person at this end? That other person was being critical of you for decisions that you had taken in this venture, for instance the decision to pay ‘up front’ to the overseas supplier. He described ‘lending’ you money and wanting it repaid. The relationship had soured, there is no doubt about that but it is more suggestive to me of a joint venture which had come unstuck. Indeed when I took your counsel to the various texts, Mr Barker retracted the word ‘underling’ and conceded that it did not sit easily with the messages that were relied on here.
24I do accept that you had at least some shared interests with another person in this country in relation to the product to be imported. The texts make that as plain as day. But I do not accept for one moment that you were an underling. That is not the tenor of the text traffic either between you and the supplier or you and this other person at the Australian end. I have no doubt at all and I accept that you were in this for profit. I am satisfied of that beyond reasonable doubt.
Guilty Plea
25I turn, then, to the matters raised in mitigation. The first of those is your guilty plea. You have pleaded guilty. You have done that at what I will still treat as a very early stage. As I have said earlier in these reasons, things ran off the rails to some extent last year when you indicated that you would be pleading not guilty but that was a pretty brief hiccup. I take that very early plea into account. I do not let the events of November 2019 get in the way of that. There is a utilitarian benefit that applies here. The community has been spared the time, cost and the effort of a committal hearing or a trial. Witnesses have been spared the experience of giving evidence. You have taken early responsibility for your crime and you have continued to take that despite that one brief period where you were not doing so. The sentence I intend to impose is therefore less than would have been imposed if you had been found guilty after a trial. You have in the various ways I have described facilitated the course of justice and that is what is important here.
Contrition/remorse
26You have pleaded guilty and that fact is often indicative of remorse. I am prepared to find that you do have some remorse or contrition. I take that into account in mitigation.
Rehabilitation
27What then are your prospects of rehabilitation? I can only really be quite guarded as to your future prospects of rehabilitation. Your counsel concedes as much. You are a mature man and you were when you chose to commit what was unmistakably a serious crime. So, you were no silly teenager but 36 at the time (37 now) and with a lengthy enough history before the courts. You have been sent to prison in the past and to no avail. You had served 6 months before being released onto the community corrections order shortly before this crime was committed. You were on that intense community corrections order with monitoring due to take place in March of last year. There was also supervision as well as drug treatment conditions. Yet you were planning this serious crime, even referring to the community corrections order in some texts with the overseas supplier. That chronology is not encouraging at all. I need to deter you. That much is surely plain. Judicial officers have tried in the past and I will try again. Neither prison nor the community corrections order deterred you. Hopefully the sentence that I will impose will to some extent deter you into the future. It will be far longer than any sentence you have ever served before. I do not lose sight of what appears to be a decent enough employment record and the excellent efforts that you are obviously making in custody. I am prepared to find that you do have some realistic prospects of rehabilitation but I really cannot rank them any higher than that. It is hard not to be guarded which is exactly what your counsel was submitting to me. He after all described it in these terms ‘as there being for you a glimmer of hope.’
Motivation/Role
28I have already said something of your claimed role, that is your instructions as to your role and my views as to those instructions. On any version placed before me, yours was obviously very much a calculated decision. Even on your own version, which as I say I, I do not accept, no one was holding a gun to your head. Someone asked you to be involved. You said yes. Even on your own version, you had a significant enough time to rethink your involvement and consider what you were doing. Yours was obviously a financial decision. We know that someone else had interest enough to enquire as to the arrival of the drugs. We know that person had a financial stake in all of this. But as I have said earlier, it is impossible for me to know what your true relationship was with that person. There was a financial motive behind this importation for both of you as is usually the case. I am satisfied of that beyond reasonable doubt but I repeat, you were certainly no underling. That other person described lending you money. He asked for you to pay it back once things went ‘pear shaped’ and he then became menacing in that regard. But he had not taken the decision to pay the overseas supplier, you had, and he was not happy with your decision. He said in one of the messages, he did not want anything to be paid up front but that you did that as you did not want to let down the supplier and break your word. It is plain that you had the relationship with the supplier and were taking these critical steps and making these key decisions. It is not to the point that another was funding this. You were the key player. You had the key discussions with the supplier. You sent the money. You were the person taking all the essential steps to bring the drugs into the country. You were the person mentioning a kilogram transaction, not that you stand to be sentenced for that of course. The parcel was to be coming to your address. None of those things are altered by the fact that another person had a stake in this exercise or had lent you money or even funded it. None of that is altered by the fact that the relationship between you and that other person soured when the importation failed. He described the overseas supplier as ‘your rorting mate’. ‘He has rorted you’. He was remonstrating with you for decisions that you had taken, decisions that are just entirely inconsistent with any suggestion of your being an underlying. So, I reject your instructions to your counsel as to your role and your expected reward, for that matter. I am not satisfied of your account on the balance of probabilities. I have no idea what you were hoping to gain financially, just that you were and that it must have been of an amount, of a dimension sufficient to warrant the taking of what you knew was a very sizeable risk by committing what you knew was a serious crime.
29It is clear enough though that you were doing everything that was necessary to be done to bring about this importation.
30Your offending is accordingly very serious, as is conceded.
31There have been numerous occasions where higher courts in this State (and other States for that matter) have emphasised that those who engage in the importation of drugs into this country must, if caught, expect to suffer significant punishment. Many of those cases are footnoted in the sentencing submissions of the prosecutor. I am not going to descend to a review of the case law or the principles at play. They are just uncontroversial.
32There are many statements made by judges as to the difficulty of detecting importation offences and also the great social consequences that follows on from such crimes. Of the vital role of deterrence in cases such as this. Case after case suggests that stern punishment is to be expected and that sentences must signal to would be offenders that the large potential financial rewards on offer are neutralised by the risk of severe punishment, if apprehended.
33It is an inherently serious offence to import drugs into this country. You, like so many others before you and I am confident, so many who will follow after you, were prepared to take a massive risk for some gain. You knew the stakes. You knew the risks. You must have weighed them up and you were prepared to take your chances. Your gamble, that is what it was, has not paid off and now of course you pay with your own liberty.
The offending
34Your crime, punishable by a 25-year maximum term was nothing spontaneous. It was obviously a premeditated crime. It is certainly not the most sophisticated example of this offence but you were however doing all of the critical acts. Ordering, paying, communicating with the supplier and intending to receive the parcel using a false name but your own address.
35It is impossible to stop drug importations into this country. Many of them are not sophisticated in this day and age. It is offending that is very hard to detect. Not every importation is detected. Not every importation can be stopped. It is obvious enough that some of them get through undetected. Some by mail, some in person, some by container or vessel.
36However, any person importing into this country drugs of this quantity, must expect to receive a very substantial immediate term of imprisonment. There is a 25 year maximum term at play and I must have regard to that maximum term.
37This was not some tiny quantity of drugs, but of course, nor was it anywhere near the top of the range. It was between 325 and 421 grams of pure cocaine. It was at least 162 times the marketable quantity of that drug (between 162 and 210 times that quantity). But I do not lose sight of it being only between 16% to 21% of the commercial quantity. Quantity is always of some relevance. It is not the only matter of course but it is a matter of real relevance to my task.
38General deterrence has a vital role to play in this sort of case as I have said.
39This court must send a very clear message to any like-minded person engaged in or thinking of being engaged in this sort of activity into the future. People must think long and hard before becoming involved in importing drugs into this country for if they do and if they are apprehended, they must understand that the consequences will be serious. You knew that and you took the risk.
40Consistency of sentencing is an important consideration, and I do pay regard to it. I have looked at the other cases involving sentencing for this type of offence to which I was referred. The table of cases prepared by the prosecution which I will mark as part of Exhibit A was selected no doubt based on the quantities disclosed and the various roles of the offender. There were some common features, but the sentencing submissions alerted me to some differences. Having now read those various cases, it is clear that there are a large number of differences in the personal circumstances of the offender or the offence circumstances, or both. There almost always are differences. I am not in any way assisted by a single example of a lone judge in this court sentencing another offender. I was taken in Mr Yianoulatos' previously filed submissions marked as Exhibit 1 to the case of Cooper 2018 VCC 1226. That was a decision of single judge of this court. It is no precedent for anything. Cooper was 28 years of age with no prior history and very significant efforts at rehabilitation since the offending. Someone who had what were described as good prospects of rehabilitation and the application of some of the principles from the case of Verdins to the sentencing exercise. The importations were larger but were held by the sentencing judge to be primarily for personal use. What does the sentence in Cooper say about the sentence that I must impose or about sentencing practices more generally? It says nothing at all and indeed Mr Barker was not relying on it. He did not even refer to it in his written submissions or oral submissions made before me.
41I have looked more broadly at sentences imposed for this offence. I am speaking of the importation of a marketable quantity offence, including the Court of Appeal’s coverage of the marketable quantity sentences in the case of Pham. Both when the Court of Appeal allowed the appeal against the sentence I imposed, (See Pham [2014] VSCA 204) and when they dealt with it again once the High Court remitted it back to the Court of Appeal for sentence. (See Pham [2016] VSCA 259).
42One has got to be careful about this. I have got to be careful firstly not to stray into cases dealing with sentencing outcomes for the more serious offence of importation of a commercial quantity. That has got a higher maximum. You are not charged with that offence. I have also got to be careful in that. I am not passing sentence as a statistician. What has occurred in another case does not compel me to follow that by way of precedent. Other sentences are not precedents.
43What I have go to do is pass an appropriate sentence for your crimes.
44The importation offence before me is unmistakably serious. I am not even going to further discuss the ammunition offence. It is what it is and what it is, is a matter of very little seriousness in the scheme of things here.
45In this case, as your counsel correctly conceded, there is no alternative but to impose a term of imprisonment upon you and one of a dimension requiring a non-parole period.
46I take into account all of Mr Barker’s submissions as well as the materials placed before me, including those portions of Mr Yianoulatos' submissions that were not disavowed.
47I have regard to the relevant matters that are set out in s.16A(2) of the Crimes Act (Commonwealth). In these reasons, I have used language probably more resembling the language I might use in a State sentencing exercise. That is just really by force of habit. It is a matter of using the language that I am used to employing as a sentencing judge. Mostly I sentence in relation to State matters but very much the same concepts apply whether applying the State or Federal scheme.
48It is plain that prison is a disposition of last resort. Of course it is. It is plain that given the nature of the offending, the sentence in this case must exceed three years. That much is conceded. Hence, I will be obliged to fix a non-parole period. I have no doubt about any of those concessions.
Sentence
49Mr Hickey please stand if you would, thank you.
50On the related summary offence, I will deal with that first, possession of cartridge ammunition, you are convicted and fined the sum of $500.
Forfeiture
51There is an application for forfeiture order. Under the provisions of s.151 of the Firearms Act, there is no opposition to the making of that order. I am satisfied that it is appropriate to make the order, that the conditions for the making of it are made out and I have signed that order forfeiting the shotgun cartridges and the bandolier belt to the minister.
52On the charge of importing a marketable quantity of a border-controlled substance into this country, you are convicted and sentenced to 72 months or 6 years' imprisonment. That sentence commences today.
Non Parole period
53I direct that you serve a non-parole period of 48 months or four years.
54I will ask you to have a seat. I am required to explain the nature and effect of this parole order. It will take a little bit of time to do so.
55The purpose of such an order is to permit your possible release from prison, subject to certain conditions, at the expiry of the non-parole period. It follows that you will serve a sentence of four years in prison. A parole order may then be made, but in the Federal domain, that is entirely in the hands of the Commonwealth Attorney-General. See s.19AL of the Commonwealth Crimes Act 1914. As I am dealing with a Federal sentence, these considerations of parole will not be vested in the hands of the State Adult Parole Board, but rather as I understand it, would be under the control of the Federal Offenders Unit of the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Office.
56If and when such an order is made, it envisages a period of service in the community called the 'parole period' to complete the service of this sentence.
57Now, I cannot speculate about whether you will be paroled or whether you will not be paroled.
58If a parole order is made, it would be subject to conditions which you would need to comply with, and such an order can be amended or it can be revoked. Now, I really cannot know now in 2020 what those conditions might be. They would no doubt be informed by your needs some time from now. But the consequences, if you fail without excuse to fulfil these conditions on parole, would be your being ordered to serve the balance of the sentence up to 6 years.
Section 17A
59I am obliged to state the reasons for proceeding to impose a term of imprisonment. No other sentence was appropriate, given the nature and the gravity of your crime. This was explicitly conceded by your own counsel, and my reasons to this point will hopefully explain why there was no other option other than to imprison you.
Pre-sentence detention
60I make a declaration pursuant to s.16E of the Crimes Act 1914, as to the time that you have already served in custody. You get the benefit of that time obviously. I declare that the period of 339 days has already been served pursuant to this sentence. That amount of pre-sentence detention is to be noted in the records of the court.
6AAA
61I have also told you that I have reduced your sentence because you have pleaded guilty. But for your guilty plea, I would have sentenced you to be imprisoned for a period of 8 ½ years and I would have fixed a non-parole period of six and a half years had you been found guilty having run a trial. That statement is to be noted in the records of the court. Let me just see if there is anything else that I need to deal with. Any other matters that I need to deal with at all?
62MS SIMPSON: No, Your Honour.
63MR VALOS: No, Your Honour.
64HIS HONOUR: No, all right. Mr Valos, you will go down and see your client downstairs will you or?
65MR VALOS: There is some pandemonium downstairs with this Coronavirus issue, Your Honour.
66HIS HONOUR: Well, do you want to just speak to him briefly here or?
67MR VALOS: I would be grateful, Your Honour.
68HIS HONOUR: Yes, I will stay on the Bench though but you go and take whatever time you need obviously.
69MR VALOS: I will not take long, Your Honour, thank you.
70HIS HONOUR: Yes, all right.
71MR VALOS: Thank you, Your Honour.
72HIS HONOUR: All right, well that completes the matter then, Mr Hickey. So, if Mr Hickey could be removed, thank you. I will just sign the formal order.
- - -
0
2
0